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Another reason not to waste time debating creationists

Comments are still trickling in and I still get email about this article, where I explain why debate is a poor strategy for dealing with creationists. I definitely don’t argue that we should avoid engaging the public, but that there are a number of reasons why the debate format doesn’t work for resolving conflicts between legitimate science and discredited malarkey. However, I missed one.

Some of you may know that a couple of commenters here resolved to have an off-site written debate on the dependency of the universe’s existence on, specifically, the Abrahamic god. The debate is at the Topical Octagon, but after The Physicist AKA Equus Pallidus put up his first rambling shamble of a post, the debate was terminated for a very common reason: plagiarism.

There is almost no creative, original work on the creationist side. I sometimes wonder if the only reason that ID gets so much attention is that one thing the ID creationists did accomplish was to infuse a collection of new arguments into their side’s corner — over and over again, the same old arguments, even down to the same words, show up in creationist debates. It’s like the scholarly tradition in creationism is a glorified version of cut & paste, lifting paragraphs from other works and stringing them together, and Behe and company at least provided some new source texts from which to steal words.

Although IDists don’t have much new to add. The last talk I heard by Behe was virtually identical, right down to the same old jokes, to the first talk I’d heard from him, ten years before.

Comments

Interesting, PZ! You’re absolutely correct: same old arguments rambled over and over, and, even worse, plagiarized. But I guess when reiteration and bullheadedness is the name of the game (“stay the course!”), there’s very little genuine thought going into the whole argument.

same old arguments rambled over and over, and, even worse, plagiarized. But I guess when reiteration and bullheadedness is the name of the game (“stay the course!”), there’s very little genuine thought going into the whole argument.

Wait… are we talking about creationist arguments or George W. Bush and the neocon arguments for the war in Iraq?

Anyone who reads only the post where the debate was canned might get the impression that the example given there was the only passage plagiarized. Not so. About three-quarters of the way through this thread I posted more details.

One thought not contained in your article: Creationist “combat” with infidel sciencers resembles tribal loyalty. Doesn’t matter how sound your reasoning, so long as the tribe member emerges (physically) unscathed, they’re victorious and united against the infidel.

But, when a tribe member needs for instance, medical help, infidel science is most welcome. Logical consistency or empirical validity are unimportant. Only the pride of the tribe matters.

True, but argumentum ad copy-n-paste requires a copy-and-paste response, as well. That is, for oft repeated, well-refuted arguments, we must then make the oft-repeated, well known refutation. I don’t know what the problem is, but it has something to do with belief despite a lack of or counter evidence. The people who argue for creationism will not “look at the evidence” and make their decision. They are hung up on proving their irrational beliefs, and using whatever logical fallacy, false evidence, sophist reasoning, or other handy device at their side to justify it to themselves.

And in atheist circles these days, I see a lot of discussion about the problem. The whys, hows, whats, and so forth – but there really hasn’t been much discussion in our community about solutions. Part of that is because we wouldn’t really have the power to implement a solution right now, but we need to have that information ready for when the tide turns. Perhaps having that will help turn the tide itself.

I think there needs to be a debate, but not a debate about evolution. There needs to be a debate about intellectual honesty.

Do you think a Behe or a Dembske would show up for a debate on intellectual honesty?

Surely, any rational skeptic worth their salt should be able to churn out a series of Powerpoint slides on the nature of intellectual dishonesty that would come across to hoi polloi.

The nice thing about debating intellectual honesty is that it not only addresses intelligent design creationism, but a whole host of issues that have fucked up the world we live in. The mode of intellectually dishonest argument that the IDCers rely on is the same mode of argument that gave us everything from the War in Iraq to the Edwards Hair debacle.

Here’s one for you and Chris, Sheril: Intellectual Dishonesty is the frame you want. Nobody likes being lied to, and every willing person can be taught to recognize a dishonest argument. There are intellectually honest theists out there (see Pharyngula’s own Scott Hatfield, Fred Clark at Slactivist, etc.), so it shouldn’t threaten anyone’s faith. It does threaten hidden political agendas, however — but that’s a good thing, right?

Well, that’s what Chrsitians (specifically evangelicals and fundamentalists) do in general — they quote the Bible and what their pastor preached over and over and over again instead of trying to figure out what they think and express it in their own words. It is a total intellectual cop-out, but since they’re mostly anti-intellectuals, they don’t even care.

This reminds me of a “friendly” debate I recently had, and I say friendly because it was between me and a friend, and nothing monumental or life-altering has happened since to either of us. See kids, Atheists and Theists can be friends. Anyways, we were discussing some of the double standards creationists often hide behind during any kind of debate. I told him that it is pointless for any one to actually debate creationism because it always has the “I win button” like throwing a stick of dynamite in a rock-paper-scissor game.

For example, if you tell a creationist that the Earth is ~4.5 Billion years old and the Universe is over 13 Billion years old, and that this completely contradicts their 12,000 year or so “beginning”, they will often spit back out “God works in mysterious ways” or “God made the rocks to seem that old, to fool your science”. The first is a very common answer, but the second I have been privileged enough, if you can call it that, to hear first hand.

On the other hand, an argument that has been running rampant lately since every creationist likes to regurgitate anything they’ve read somewhere else is the formation of hemoglobin, or some other protein in the body. They’ll say something like “the odds of it forming on its own are astronomical, there must be something guiding its formation, like GOD”. At this point its fairly trivial to even argue against it. It doesn’t really matter what the odds are, because it happened, we’re here. But if you remind them of that fact, they take it as a win anyways.

The comments are hilarious. I love the way every time he needs to offer up something more substantial than insults and threats blogger conveniently “eats” his posts. It’s almost as if he has nothing to say at all!

For example, if you tell a creationist that the Earth is ~4.5 Billion years old and the Universe is over 13 Billion years old, and that this completely contradicts their 12,000 year or so “beginning”, they will often spit back out “God works in mysterious ways” or “God made the rocks to seem that old, to fool your science”. The first is a very common answer, but the second I have been privileged enough, if you can call it that, to hear first hand.

The perfect rebuttal to the second answer is to tell the aforementioned Creationist that for God to “fool (our) science,” would necessate making Him a lying trickster, and as such, making such a statement is, technically, blasphemy.

Wow, that debate was weird. Well, the increasingly evident looniness of The Physicist was weird. “I win! You must concede defeat!” But with more typos and threats.

Formation of hemoglobin is a fun one to debate. I have (probably, hard to diagnose definitively) a metabolic disorder that causes a disruption in the heme biosynthesis pathway (porphyria, fortunately not one of the icky cutaneous ones). It doesn’t disprove their hemoglobin arguments, but does stop them short in demonstrating that one can be perfectly functional with slightly off genetic code for an essential function. (Animals have porphyrias, too, although I don’t know much about it. I should go read up on them.)

The perfect rebuttal to the second answer is to tell the aforementioned Creationist that for God to “fool (our) science,” would necessate making Him a lying trickster, and as such, making such a statement is, technically, blasphemy.

Yes, but rarely will the Creationist concede that the evidence is against him. Rather than admit the evidence for an old Earth is overwhelming, you’re much more likely to hear that dating methods are unsound or that scientists interpret the evidence differently based on his or her “preexisting assumptions.”

Many creationists will even happily admit their bias when filtering the evidence, but they just respond that secular scientists do the same thing with their “materialistic” bias.

I agree. But if science starts with the preamble : there is no evidence for god / the spiritual, therefore we don’t see the need for it, what you get is the current situation where creationism (pseudo science) ENTERS AND TRY TO PLAY THE ROLE OF SCIENCE.

Really no point in worrying about it. The average creo just wants some rationalizations for his reality denying belief system. That it is a pack of stupid lies doesn’t matter since the lies are to shore up a pack of other lies.
I’ve dealt with the rank and file a bit mostly on line. They tend to be uneducated and not very bright. If they were neither, they wouldn’t be creos.

One guy claimed that humans couldn’t decend from apes because:
1. Humans have a 4 chambered heart and apes have 3 chambered hearts.
2. Humans have color vision and apes don’t.
3. Humans don’t have any muscles in their feet and apes do.

All 3 of these statements are false as 2 minutes with a search engine would show. They don’t care, a lie is equivalent to the truth in their world.

There is no incompatibility between faith and science as long as the religious can check their faith at the door when they want to learn about and discuss science.

This just give you the “God of the Gaps”, and the end result of that is religion with no factual claims about the physical world (including such things as miracles, life after death, ensouling of embryos, etc.). In other words, the end result is pretty much nothing like what most people believe. It’s NOMA by fiat, and I really doubt that any savvy religious person would accept that.

Poke #15: Yeah, The Physicist surprised me with the aggressive, kick-ass Texan persona he displayed on the debate thread over on T.O. He hasn’t whipped that one out here on Pharyngula, for some reason. Maybe he was simply trying to be a good guest…

HP #10: In a word, “Yes.”

Christian: You’re the French atheist Christian, right? There’s another Christian (a theist and allegedly a physicist, and also French) posting on the “29 words” thread. I humbly suggest that one of you devise a more distinctive handle.

:-)

* * *

The name of the creationist game is indeed Reiteration.

“Repeat a lie often enough, with enough conviction, and…”

I actually fear the proven efficacy of that strategy. It never stops. Now the insurgents in Iraq are all “al Qaeda” and always were. Soooo… Invading Iraq was all about 9/11 and the War on Terrorism after all! How could I have missed that? *facepalm*

Orwell, Orwell, Orwell.

Re: Ken Ham. A friend of mine (more of a surrogate mom) from Kentucky recently visited the Creation Museum (against her will; she was in the neighborhood, and some friends/family dragged her to check it on the grounds that there was some “good stuff” in there. Sigh.)

She’s a Bible scholar (who realizes that much of it cannot be taken literally) and friend of Jesus, but like quite a few theists I know, eschews organized religion out of… well… disgust. Faith is a very personal experience for her. It’s all about having a relationship with her Creator. Anyway, she’s certainly no scientist, but she knows malarkey when she sees it. [Insert your own sardonic “Bible scholar” comment here.] Her assessment of the museum: Crap. (My word, not hers.)

Point being, there are a lot of folk out there like her, which is why I think the Museum (which I’m starting to think of as “Canned Ham”) will have a short shelf-life. One can only hope.

If you think that my belief in God goes against all evidence, common sense, or the thruth, you probably know in advance what my belief in God entails.

Didn’t say that. You have no right to even infer that I said that. My comments were strictly directed to creationism, a lie, and the lies that shore up the lie.

Science is methodological naturalism, concerned only with the observable world and neutral on the supernatural. The vast majority of xians and other religions are perfectly OK with science and reality. This isn’t a popular statement on a fundamentalist atheist board*, but science and religion are compatible as shown by the fact that both have coexisted for 2,000 years.

The attack on science is real. It is also mostly the lie and violence soaked cults of the south central USA. Even the pope came out yesterday and said what I just said. Catholics make up 1 billion of the 2.1 billion xians.

*You know the drill. Issue a fatwa, declare heresy, put on the Jihadi hat, and go crusade. It is amusing how fast nonbelief takes on the resemblance to a religion.

Christian, I think the main problem with theistic evolutionism (I’m talking about it in general terms now, since you haven’t revealed much of your personal brand yet) is that it usually implies a teleological interpretation. The process of evolution is often seen as guided by the deity-of-choice, with man as its goal and main achievement – it’s just a new version of the old “Crown of creation” schtick. A mainstream view of evolution would instead insist that we’re just one small branch on the tree of life, which just happened to be extremely successful.

Still, I definitely think TE is a step in the right direction from old-school creationism.

Kseniya: “Canned Ham”? For that you win. Whatever the contest is, whatever the prize is, you win.

Christian, you might enjoy the article on skepticality and religious belief in this week’s eSkeptic by Dr. Hal Bidlack, a skeptic and a theist.

But I am unclear on what you mean by “If you think that my belief in God goes against all evidence, common sense, or the thruth, you probably know in advance what my belief in God entails.” Are you suggesting that your belief does indeed go against evidence and common sense, or were you sarcastically suggesting that your belief is of a type unknown to Raven?

For example, if you tell a creationist that the Earth is ~4.5 Billion years old and the Universe is over 13 Billion years old, and that this completely contradicts their 12,000 year or so “beginning”, they will often spit back out “God works in mysterious ways” or “God made the rocks to seem that old, to fool your science”. The first is a very common answer, but the second I have been privileged enough, if you can call it that, to hear first hand.

The perfect rebuttal to the second answer is to tell the aforementioned Creationist that for God to “fool (our) science,” would necessate making Him a lying trickster, and as such, making such a statement is, technically, blasphemy
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If the goal for “debating” creationist, theists is to get them to question their belief I think that this might be a good approach. From within the christian belief system exists a “being” called Satin who is a lier and deceiver. What would be the biggest lie of all but to claim that “I am God.” So it appears to me that by definition religion is worship of Satin!

The vast majority of xians and other religions are perfectly OK with science and reality.

Most Christians believe in miracles and the power of prayer. Most Christians in the US don’t believe in evolution. A large portion don’t believe the earth is more than 10,000 years old. How does this translate into “perfectly OK with science and reality”?

This isn’t a popular statement on a fundamentalist atheist board*, but science and religion are compatible as shown by the fact that both have coexisted for 2,000 years.

Because religions have never persecuted scientists that promoted ideas contrary to their beliefs.

The remarkable thing about creationist plagiarism, beyond how widespread it is, is how brazen about it they are. I realise that apologetics is a very different discourse than science, but even so I can’t imagine any discourse in which passing off other people’s arguments – their very words – as your own would be acceptable. And yet, as EP’s comments show, even when they’re caught they can’t see what the problem is. And then they have the nerve to complain about angry scientists. Why on earth would scientists get angry when their opponents literally and deceptively recycle arguments they’ve seen a thousand times before? I can’t possibly imagine.

Maybe it’s got something to do with their poorly executed obsession with scripture – they’re so used to going back to an ancient text to support their positions that they do it reflexively with other texts. They don’t have the gumption to pass off the Bible as their own words, but what does Hugh Ross care?

Seriously, though, just this morning I was thinking about the God-as-Loki thing — and here it is right on Pharyngula.

(“Who are we to know the mind of God? It is hubris to question. Uh, but of course we know all about where he stands on sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. It’s all right there in the Bible. Which is The Revealed Word of God. Except the parts that aren’t. What? Oh, shut up. Go away! You’ll burn! I win!”)

This debate will be won by those who can explain why there is no incompatibility between faith, a belief in God and the spiritual and science

Unfortunately, your premise is just plain, conservative, old-fashioned wrong. Science is founded on logic, rationality, evidence, and observation. Faith and a belief in God and the spiritual is founded on illogic, irrationality, lack of evidence and ignorance of obseravtion.

There can be no compatibility between those things. They are polar opposites. Faith and unfounded beliefs are not scientific. Basing thought on logic, evidence and observation, and more importantly, the ability to reshape those thoughts when they don’t hold up to evidence and observation leaves no room for faith.

If a person comes along who manages, somehow, to meld faith and science, then we all – believer and sceptic – lose.

Does ID really add new arguments to creationism (or theism in general)? When it comes to “evidence”-based arguments for creationism, it’s always been (in my experience) “We don’t know/can’t be absolutely certain, therefore God” or “Behold our mangling of science into a strawman, science is wrong, therefore God by argument #1.” ID might be using new words, but they’re still using the same two bad arguments as far as I can tell.

The vast majority of xians and other religions are perfectly OK with science and reality.

In my experience, that is true… but only as far as science and reality are kept separate from religion.

As soon as you ask a believer to explain how some particular aspect of his religion can be supported by science, he gets dismissive at best, angry at worst. I can only conjecture that this happens because when the inconsistencies are pointed out, the weakly religious recognize that they’ve been caught and know that their position is untenable, but for personal/cultural/traditional reasons refuse to move from their untenable position. This creates conflict and anger.

This is something I see all the time… about 1/3 of my relatives are Jehova’s Witness. I’m sure you can imagine how discussions go when there’s any significant family gathering that involves me and them :) If you asked any of them if, say, they believed in evolution, I’m certain they’d say “absolutely”. But if you followed that with “but how does that fit with your faith”, their little hard-wired brains would explode.

Most Christians believe in miracles and the power of prayer. Most Christians in the US don’t believe in evolution. A large portion don’t believe the earth is more than 10,000 years old. How does this translate into “perfectly OK with science and reality”?

Most mainstream protestant, nonchristian, and catholic sects are OK with science. This is the vast majority of xians even in the USA. What the rank and file believe is sort of dismal. But 20% of the population believe the sun goes around the earth and a lot more believe in astrology, a decidedly nonchristian practice. A lot of this is most likely ignorance and apathy rather than hatred and attacks on science.

The proof of the coexistence of science and relgion. The USA is 82% xian, 90% religious (source gallup GSS poll, 2006).
The USA spends 50% of the world’s R&D, produces 50% of the world’s science, and has been the acknowledged world leader for decades.

If US religion and science weren’t coexisting, none of the above would have happened.

The attack on science is real and potentially a disaster for us. But it isn’t all religions, in fact, it is a minority of bizarre cults.

If anyone thinks that science is under attack by xianity in general, they are foolish and wrong. They would also lose badly. That 82% xians outnumbers the atheistic fanatical fundies by a long, long ways. They also support science by paying taxes. Science is expensive. Science runs on money. I believe the NIH budget alone this year is 20 billion bucks.

well, I’d define myself first of all as a scientifically biased individual. I tend to consider what are the generally accepted scientific theories (by the specialists in those respective fields) as the valid explanations of the various phenomena. It’s just based on common sense, if a large group of intelligent people who have put a lot of work together converge to a common conclusion, who am I to refute it ?

Having said that, I also believe in God. But a Spinoza type god : God is the only thing that exists. Not a god of the gap. I think the bible (or Quran) were written by humans, at a time to be understood by humans. Even if you assume, for a second, that these could have received a “divine inspiration”, there is no way these people could have understood genetics or quantum mechanics, at that given time. You could argue, in the same way, that Newton, einstein or Darwin, also received this “divine inspiration”. This is anyway nothing refutable and therefore not scientific as a hypothesis.

The key point is to ask yourself this question : is it possible that indeed, God is everything. Now, does that mean that we, as humans shouldn’t try to understand better how he works, via science. No. Shall we invent pseudo science to try to misinterpret facts that we already have very valid explanations for ? Neither.

But it has a lot of impact on my ethical and moral behaviour whilst I am alive and well, and that faith helps me in afronting death.

The point I am making is that faith and science are two completely different things. Creationists are trying to play science. But didn’t science also make the mistake of trying to play religion ?

Most mainstream protestant, nonchristian, and catholic sects are OK with science.

You can continue to assert that, but the evidence is far to the contrary. Again, most Christians believe in the efficacy of prayer, in miracle, and don’t believe in evolution. That’s not being “OK with science”. I also think it is arguable that, worldwide, most non-Christian sects are also profoundly anti-science.

If US religion and science weren’t coexisting, none of the above would have happened.

Surely you are familiar with the huge attack on science during the recent US presidential administration, largely based on religious grounds. Look at funding for stem-cell research, look at the fight over HPV vaccine, look at the fight over global warming, look at the attempt to get creationism in schools, and then tell me science isn’t under attack by religion.

Surely you are familiar with the huge attack on science during the recent US presidential administration, largely based on religious grounds. Look at funding for stem-cell research, look at the fight over HPV vaccine, look at the fight over global warming, look at the attempt to get creationism in schools, and then tell me science isn’t under attack by religion.

I’m calling strawman here. I didn’t say that. Once again and that is it. I’ll type real slow but it won’t do any good.

1. You are generalizing from a small group of bizarre sects based in south central USA to all christians. Confusing a minority with a majority is wrong. “and then tell me science isn’t under attack by religion.”

Sure, science is under attack by some weird, religious cults. “Bizarre fundie cults” is not equal to “all religion”. The logic error here is simple. “PZ is a scientist. PZ is an atheist. Therefore all scientists are atheists.

2. The majority of mainstream protestant, the catholics, and the nonxians are fine with science. They pay for it.

3. The Bush administration has been a destructive force against a lot of science. This shows that the cultists have enough luck, votes, and political power to elect a moron. BTW, Bush was not elected on an anti-science platform. He was elected on mostly an anti-terrorism platform, at least the second time around. Bush’s approval rating right now is 26%, about as low as it gets. You can bet that the majority of those 74% who are sick of the guy are….xians.

Faith: influences my moral, ethics and helps me to affront death (note: all these things have nothing to do with science)

Actually, the moral implications of a belief in the Christian god were what led me down the path to becoming an apologist (first Catholic, then merely Christian) and eventually an atheist based in scientific naturalism. Scientific knowledge certainly can influence ethics and morality (for instance, the knowledge that the differences between men, women, and the variously described ‘races’ are mostly superficial) can lead one to concepts such as universal human rights. (In contrast, a God who is ethnically and temporally selective about whom he chooses to reveal himself to requires a lot of apologetic ‘thinking’–in other words, making stuff up–to reconcile with the concept of universal human equality).

The vast majority of xians and other religions are perfectly OK with science and reality. This isn’t a popular statement on a fundamentalist atheist board*, but science and religion are compatible as shown by the fact that both have coexisted for 2,000 years.

Ignoring for now the fact that science has not existed for 2,000 years, co-existence is not evidence of compatibility. Both aggression and pacifism have co-existed for even longer, yet they are clearly polar opposites. A mobster can be a sweetheart to his family and a sadist to his victims. Just because people are capable of holding contradictions doesn’t mean they aren’t contradictions.

*You know the drill. Issue a fatwa, declare heresy, put on the Jihadi hat, and go crusade. It is amusing how fast nonbelief takes on the resemblance to a religion.

Is this supposed to be funny? Because you’ve just listed everything that differentiates religion from non-religion. Even if you were just throwing around hyperbolic metaphors in the case of atheists, the fact that these things aren’t merely metaphors when it comes to religion is extremely telling.

Faith : influences my moral, ethics and helps me to affront death (note : all these things have nothing to do with science)

Science : helps me to understand how things work

Shouldn’t morals and ethics come from an understanding of how things work? Otherwise, there’s no legitimacy to claims behind what is ethical and what is not. When you know that heaven does not exist, murder becomes a yet more heinous crime, for example – because that’s the way things work. Religion’s claims to legitimacy usually stem from knowing the opinion or feelings of some sky-god. Since we know from the way things work that this is bull, those edicts have no legitimacy. I think you’re just deluding yourself into a rationalization for clinging to false belief.

I wasn’t going to comment on the absurdity of ‘fundamentalist’ atheism, mostly because it was obviously thrown out as a distraction by someone upset that us ‘poah meenie ole afeists are not wespeckting weligion’, but I’m glad someone called Blake’s Law on that shit.

Brownian : that’s why I do not define myself as Christian.
A lot of the problems of this world have to do, not with faith per say, but on the fact that most faiths relied on antiquated and totally outdated scriptures.

Research for the People
The NIH invests over $28 billion annually in medical research for the American people.

More than 80% of the NIH’s funding is awarded through almost 50,000 competitive grants to more than 325,000 researchers at over 3,000 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions in every state and around the world.

One more for the road. For an example of how much the religious 90% majority hates science, contemplate the NIH budget for this year. It is $28 billion bucks. This is for medical research alone and doesn’t include NASA, NSF, and other programs.

The absolute easiest way to kill US science would be to cut funding. Scientists don’t do science by posting on message boards or handwaving. Research is expensive and they spend money to do it. Lots of money.

The majority are smart enough to realize that the benefits of science are for everyone. Longer life spans, better health, improved technology, a 21st century lifestyle instead of a 16th century one.

because it was obviously thrown out as a distraction by someone upset that us

More amused than anything. The fundie atheists seem to be just as dogmatic, defensive, and fanatical as any fundie xian, fundie moslem, or fundie Jew. Some people claim that religion is hard wired into the human brain. Fundie atheists by turning their nonbelief into a quasi-religion would have a hard time disproving that.

raven:

A common supposition is that religion is hardwired into the human brain and that it had some evolutionary advantage. Which may or may not now be as obsolete as the giant antlers of the Irish elk.

This would explain why it is universal in human cultures. Why serious attempts to eradicate it in totalitarian countries were failures. And why ideologies like communism end up looking very much like secular religions. Complete with schisms, dogmas, sacred books, saints, apostates, etc..

Not going to agree or disagree with the supposition. I don’t know and like to answer questions with data rather than rhetoric and hand waving. If it is the case, religion will never go away. It might however, evolve into something benign like secular humanism or unitarian universialism or even apathetic agnosticism.

Some atheists seem to behave rather like fundamentalists, another secular religion. It’s OK. Issue the fatwas and accusations of heresy, put on your Jihadi hat, and go crusade. LOL

raven, just because religious groups do not attack all aspects of science does not mean that they are somehow “perfectly OK with science” — they are clearly not “OK with science” when it contradicts their religious beliefs. To say that this kind of tolerance somehow equals full acceptance is like arguing that there was no racial discrimination in the US because some people employed blacks as housemaids.

And the attack is far from a “small group of bizarre sects based in south central USA” — the majority of Americans don’t believe in evolution. The Catholic Church officially opposes embryonic stem-cell research. Belief in creationism is very strong in many Muslim countries.

Finally, you haven’t addressed the point about fundamental anti-scientific beliefs in practically all religions, such as miracles and the power of prayer.

Faith : influences my moral, ethics and helps me to affront death (note : all these things have nothing to do with science)

Science : helps me to understand how things work

Well, affronting death could be considered anti-scientific, since the evidence points to death being rather cold and final with no magical afterlife.

There would be some logical/rational issues with believing that morality comes from an invisible superman that gives no evidence of its existence or of its moral superiority.

However, if that is the limit of your beliefs, then I would say there’s probably no conflict of significance with science, although your beliefs certainly defy scientific evidence. Your beliefs DO conflict with science, however there’s probably bigger fish to fry.

This seems like as good a time as any for a reminder that–although I did used to post as “Raven” on the old site, the one that allowed my sweet little sun bear gravatar–“raven” and “RavenT” are actually two very different posters.

That’s pretty bad, but it doesn’t support the claim that “most Christians” disbelieve Evolution. Or does it?

It seems that only 26% of all those surveyed believe in evolution through natural selection, while 21% believe in evolution guided by a supreme being. Ack.

The breakdowns shown on the summary are kind of odd. The categories are White Evangelical, White Mainstream, White Catholic, and Secular. Perhaps non-Christian theists were not polled.

Apparently, 83% of those in the “secular” category believe in evolution, 69% in evolution by natural selection. Interestingly, 9% of the Secular group believe in guided evolution – so, just as in real life, “secular” is not synonymous with “atheist”.

It’s possible that the Secular segment is sufficiently large to push the percentage of Christians who do believe in evolution below 50%. I can’t tell without looking at the whole report. I haven’t downloaded the entire report, so I can’t make sense of everything that’s in the summary on the website, nor can I make any informed judgements as to the validity or relevance of the survey itself. I don’t have time for it now, but it might be of interest to some of my fellow readers.

I don’t agree that in a debate, non constubtion to paragraph would be called plagerism. The reason not to debate an old Earth creationist, Is because you will get your but kicked. I had TO Cornered and you can tell by his suddennly setting new rules. He claimed a third party moderator, wich we didn’t get. And he was looking for an excuse to close the debate.

How is not atrributing something to someone change the truth of the debate. Don’t worry I am in process of rectifying this whole mess by copying the debate and continued myu rebyttal some where else, And don’t worry I leave the plagerism claim up. It will be just as it is and I will tear him completely to pieces. I hadn’t even started, but to pull into his own parodoxical thinking.

The majority are smart enough to realize that the benefits of science are for everyone. Longer life spans, better health, improved technology, a 21st century lifestyle instead of a 16th century one.

Raven, you have successfully shown that christians are inconsistent and hypocritical, hostile to applying the scientific method to their own mythology yet more than willing to reap the benefits of science.

Since we have no reason to believe your claims that you are a physicist (from your posts it would seem that you a barely literate and very unlikely to have graduated from any post-secondary institution), I am no longer going to address you a Physicist, but as PhysicallySick (as in, “You make me….”)

PhysicallySick, I doubt you understand the claims you lifted wholesale from Hugh Ross. You have shown yourself to be a liar and a paranoid. Your defense of plagiarism shows you lack intellectual integrity. The fact that you resorted to threats and Christian language like “motherfucker” when challenged shows you lack emotional maturity.

I doubt any of us here are interested in following your ‘debate’ elsewhere (and why would we when we could much more easily read Hugh Ross’s book since it, unlike your posts, is written in Standard American English?), so why not take your tantrums and your accusations of ‘hacking’ back home, creampuff?

“I don’t agree that in a debate, non constubtion to paragraph would be called plagerism”

Oh, I agree with you about this. I wouldn’t know what to call “non constubtion to paragraph,” other than, I guess, gibberish. I certainly wouldn’t call it “plagerism,” though, since that’s not a real word.
Brownian has kindly listed a few of the reasons you are unlikely to be taken seriously, here or anywhere else (‘ceptin’ mebbe TEXAS, Pardner).
Still, I’d like to let you in on a little secret we use around here to avoid appearing stupid or, worse, illiterate: it’s a little grey rectangular guy called the “Preview” button. Try it!

hostile to applying the scientific method to their own mythology yet more than willing to reap the benefits of science.

Bullcrap. I’ve stated many times that the creos are lies, and the cults are ignorant, lie, violence, and murder saturated wingnuts who want to overthrow the US government and head on back to the dark ages.

No one has ever been able to prove the existence of god.

No one every has been able to disprove the existence of god either. Even Dawkins admits that. Speaking of mythology, fundie atheist mythology is just as mythology as any.

I can tell you fundies don’t have real answers when you resort to insults, straw men misrepresentations, and emotional accusations. Relax, no one will take your religion away from you.

Speaking of reaping the benefits of modern science. Yes, I’m guilty. I also help produce them. In real life I’m a medical researcher.

If you’re going to bandy the term “fundamentalist” around, you’ll have to tell me what our fundamentals are, because aside from not believing in that which has no evidence behind it, I can’t think of a one.

Where, pray tell, could I find me some of that? Because really, I don’t see where there’s atheist mythology anywhere in this thread, in Dawkins, or any other rational atheist’s writings. I mean, atheism and mythology are really kind of mutually exclusive. Because I don’t think ‘atheism’ means what you think it means. For that matter, I don’t think ‘mythology’ means what you think it means.

No one every has been able to disprove the existence of god either. Even Dawkins admits that. Speaking of mythology, fundie atheist mythology is just as mythology as any.

Raven, if you really are a medical researcher, then you know quite well that the burden is on no one to “prove god doesn’t exist.” Either the god hypothesis has positive evidence in its favor, or it doesn’t merit consideration.

And fundie atheist mythology? Lol. Methinks you are very confused. Perhaps you would like to provide us with an example?

I can tell you fundies don’t have real answers when you resort to insults, straw men misrepresentations, and emotional accusations. Relax, no one will take your religion away from you.

Projection, thy name is Raven. You are one throwing a tantrum because your arguments presuming to show how religion and science are compatible turned out to be invalid.

What, exactly, makes an atheist a “fundamentalist atheist”?
What are the “fundamentals” to which a “FA” can be said to cling?
Not believing in (a) god(s)–that’s an atheist. So a FA is, what, somebody who really, really doesn’t believe? Or what? I’d appreciate clarification on this point.

This whole ‘athiest are fundamentalists’ argument is tiring, and since not one of the accusers has offered any evidence for the claim, I think we should name it and dispense with it.

For this purpose, I propose the new name for the claim that atheists are equivalent to fundamentalists as ‘Vizzini’s Vulgarism’, because it’s based on the repetition of a word in an inappropriate context with the intent of lowering the status or the position of the accused. (Other suggestions are welcome, however.) I thank MyaR for the inspiration, because MyaR’s comment reminds me of this bit of dialogue from one of the best movies of all time, The Princess Bride:

[Vizzini has just cut the rope the Man in Black has been climbing, and looks down to see the Man in Black clinging to the rocks of the cliff rather than falling to his death.]

Vizzini: He didn’t fall? Inconceivable!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word–I do not think it means what you think it means.

Yeah Sven, I know, it’s a hard one to parse… but if you don’t think that pasting a salient point from another source into the argument without attribution is not, in the context of a debate, plagiarism, you might say:

“I don’t agree that in a debate, non-contribution to a paragraph would be called plagerism.”

“Non-contribution” here has a nice Bushian ring to it.

My non-contribution to the cost of the silver bracelet around my wrist isn’t theft! It’s borrowing! All that matters is that it makes me look good!

I don’t agree that in a debate, non constubtion to paragraph would be called plagerism.

Well, I don’t agree that travelling 50mph over the legal limit should be called ‘speeding.’ I wonder if the police will agree?

The reason not to debate an old Earth creationist, Is because you will get your but kicked.

Oh, please. How are you going to defend material you don’t even understand? Manage to find the ‘spacetime theorem’ in MTW yet?

I had TO Cornered and you can tell by his suddennly setting new rules. He claimed a third party moderator, wich we didn’t get.

If you wanted a third-party to moderate, the time to raise that issue was at the beginning, not when you got caught cheating. The post which laid out the rules clearly stated that the two of you would be self-moderating. You made no objection until you needed to lay the blame at TO’s feet.

How is not atrributing something to someone change the truth of the debate.

Physicist: Violent, insulting language makes you look bad, no matter where you post. I think your passion has led you astray, and I think you failed to properly cite, and I think your prose style needs work. Whatever your real intent, if you do the things I mentioned, you’re not going to be taken seriously. And, based on my attendance of meetings of the Fresno chapter of Reason to Believe, I think that Hugh Ross (the OEC you refer to) would be horrified by your approach. Whatever else the merits of Ross’s position, he and the apologists he has trained go out of their way to emphasize that the inerrancy / literal interpretation of Genesis etc. is not doctrine critical to salvation.

Everyone: Please, please, PLEASE quit saying that we ‘believe’ in evolution, or ‘believe’ in science, because that implies faith in propositions that lack evidentiary support.

Kseniya, raven: I’m not saying that you think this, but IMO it is a mistake to equate public support of the institutions or outcomes of science with the personal application of the methods and practices of science. The majority supports the former, but do we really (ahem) “believe” that most Americans are doing the latter in their personal lives?

Again, I think that intellectual honesty requires us to recognize that many of the creos out there on the Internet are skilled at using technology, an outcome of science, and many of the most odious (Ham and Hovind come to mind) actually profess to love science. Yet we know darn well that they would die rather than admit the truth, which is that there is significant conflict between what they believe and the evidence produced by the practice of science. They claim, dishonestly, that there is no conflict. As a theist who wants to be honest (thanks, HP), I think I am compelled to admit that conflict exists, and that it can only be managed with compartmentalization, and I think that goes hand in hand with acknowledging distinctions between faith and fact, between beliefs based upon evidence and those that are not evidence-based.

Blake: I should live so long that I could get some sort of straw man named after me! Though, in fairness to raven, I don’t think everyone’s got the memo on the emptiness of that little rhetorical flourish, so I reserve judgement.

There is, after all, a leap to the sort of faith-based naturalism that Philip Johnson made a second career out of demonizing. I think it’s important to remember that ID types tend to deny that there is a distinction between methodological and metaphysical naturalism: to them, it’s all the same, and it’s part and parcel of their failed attempt to conflate faith and science to deny the distinction exists.

If we oppose them (and I assume all in this discussion do), then we must admit that metaphysical naturalism as a faith-based position surely exists, and arguments which privilege this position certainly resemble the form, if not the substance, of the Biblical fundamentalist.

I think that everybody here is just afraid of a RIGHTEOUS ASS-KICKING at the hands (feet) of The Physicinator! He’ll constubulate your discombobulated worldview until your epistemagon is thoroughly defenestrated! Praise Hod!

raven is absolutely correct. I don’t understand why many of you are on his/her case. Folks on this blog need to do a better job of learning who the real enemy is, rather than pasting broad swats.

What people on this website seem to not understand is that creationism has its own, instructive history that is quite distinct from the broader Christian tradition, and some of you could learn something by getting a better understanding of, for example, when the idea of biblical literalism first took hold.

Hint: It didn’t start thousands of years ago in a middle eastern cave.

The raving, lunatic modern day creationists only arose just over 100 years ago from a minority protestant faction centered around, of all places, Princeton University. In a reactionary movement, they were whipped up to a frenzy of faith upon the publication of the 12 volume “Fundamentals”. This is, not surprisingly, why adherents to this philosophy are called fundamentalists. Evolution wasn’t the only issue they were spitting venom about.

The sort of absolute Biblical literalism that survives today, and the creationism movement that this literalism spawned, were born for the first time in these chapters.

Google away and look them up. Read them for yourselves–and you’ll recognize any number of concepts and phrases that echo to this day in the words of doofuses like Behe and the DI folks, who are nothing more or less than modern day survivors of this tradition.

As to specific problem of raven and evidence that fundamentalism, and its inherent rejection of naturalism, is NOT shared by all X-tian faiths, look no further than how The Fundamentals treated Catholicism with such disdain, that they could hardly bring themselves to write the word, using instead Rome as a denigrating euphemism for the Catholic Church. What a hoot! They were as mad then as they seem now!!!

Chapter 59: ROME: THE ANTAGONIST OF THE NATION

“The Roman Catholic Church, both in Scriptures and in Christian history, figures as a politico-ecclesiastical system, the essential and deadly foe of civil and religious liberty, the hoary-headed antagonist of both Church and State.”

Now, do you really think that the guy who scribed that in the fundamentals was speaking as a voice of unity on behalf of all christians?

Catholicism (and many other x-tian sects not based on fundamentalism) may very well represent a doofy set of beliefs, but Catholics–the largest x-tian sect in the US, are hardly the anti-intellectuals, anti-science, or pro-creationist folk they’re being accused of in this comment section.

“metaphysical naturalism as a faith-based position surely exists”
Does it? The natural world–operationally defined as matter and energy–exists; that’s empirical. To believe that matter and energy are ALL that exist at least has a grounding in empiricism; one might even call it a default position. That seems different to me than beliefs based on “faith” alone, which have no objective empirical grounding at all.

Please, please, PLEASE quit saying that we ‘believe’ in evolution, or ‘believe’ in science, because that implies faith in propositions that lack evidentiary support.

Unfortunately, English lacks another word for the sense that is used for “I believe in evolution.” Also unfortunately, it is effectively a different word from the one used in “I believe in god.” Rather than trying to change the English language (hard to do other than accidentally), why don’t we just call people on it when they disingenuously interpret “I believe in evolution” to be faith-based and not rationality-based. Because we all, as native speakers or near-native speakers, do know the difference.

Because what are the alternatives? “I know that evolution is true.” Still has the same problem, and is actually more inflammatory. “I feel no need for faith-based claims about speciation, natural selection, etc.” There is just not a good way in English to claim personal knowledge of something without a) using ‘believe’ b) using ‘know’ or c) really cumbersome circumlocutions that just make you sound pretentious or boring.

Would that English grammatically marked for knowledge source, as some languages do. Instead, we get gender and number.

And wow, inspiration for an Internet meme. That was, of course, exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote that.

Also, a humble recommendation — do not go tear about The “Physicist”‘s blog postings unless it seems that some actual people might be led astray by it. Since this is probably the only place he’ll get traffic from it, well…

As someone above posted, he’s just jumping up and down, demanding we all look at him.

Although I can see the entertainment value in ripping apart the ravings of someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about in your own field of expertise. But kind of fish-in-a-barrel, isn’t it?

No, metaphysical naturalism can be asserted as true without appealing to any particular class of evidence. If, for example, someone uncritically takes Carl Sagan’s eloquent brief ‘The Cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be’ as a sort of revealed truth, then I would say that, yes, they are metaphysical naturalists, but no, they are not adopting it as some sort of default position derived from empiricism. And, to be fair to Dr. Sagan, he would remind them that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’

non- = not
con- = with (could go with ‘not’ here too, but then you’ve got a double-negative. since there’s linguistic evidence contrary to the binary logic argument usually given about what double-negatives actually mean, we’ll avoid that here.)
stub = very short article on Wikipedia
-tion = act of (among other things)

Thereby making “non-constubtion of a paragraph” mean something like the act of writing full, fully cited paragraphs with no fact tags. From reliable sources, of course.

How about “I have a great deal of well-founded trust in the veracity and repeatability of the metric ass-load of evidence that supports the theory of evolution over your silly bronze-age superstitions”? Nah, too long.

I like ‘metric ass-load’. Do you have a conversion table somewhere? Ideally, a nice little web app that I could just go copy-and-paste into and it would calculate exactly how many ass-loads of evidence I had. Preferably by just pasting in the url’s of my cites.

Scott: I guess. Still, although I am no philostopher (and certainly no Quentin Robert DeNameland), it seems to me there is a major difference between your “faith-based naturalism” (which at least has, you know, existence to fall back on) and faith-based anything else.
I summon Caledonian to help me out here…Cal?

No criticism was implied, but to follow your point, I’m just a high school teacher, and I have students who really do get confused on this question. I try to keep it simple: I don’t ‘believe’ in evolution. It’s a fact, and I know it’s true, because I and others have observed it.

Hey, I grok evolution! When I finally really read what it was about in middle school, the world finally made sense! And, while I was a bright 12-year-old, I wasn’t some kind of savant.

Oh, I didn’t really take it as criticism, Scott. And yes, it is important, especially with students, to make that clear. But (presumable) adults should be able to get past semantics that they have no problem with when the topic is anything other than atheism. But I think that’s where the inherent problem lies — they can’t conceive a universe where atheists aren’t the opposite of religious believers. And they are not true semantic opposites. A negation does not create an opposite.

Debating with the faithful is pointless. To debate, one is attempting to convince by argument and (possibly) evidence – for someone to be a person of faith they’ve shown they’re immune to both evidence and logic. All that’s left is yelling.

Don’t debate with them. Just laugh at them. Or sneer. Either is equally effective. Making them realize that a lot of people think their mystical pink goo-goo voodoo is silly does more to make them question their faith than all the arguments that can be mustered. The faithful are herd animals and pack conformity is very important to them; realizing that they are uncool is a significant shock.

Last time I had a bunch of mormons show up on my porch I just laughed hysterically, shaking my head and muttering, “idiots” at them until they left.

Marcus Ranum: To each his own. As a Christian, I am constrained on more than one level from taking that approach. You might also consider the possibility that what you might find personally satisfying may only serve to reinforce the ‘us against them’ mentality of the believer.

This debate will be won by those who can explain why there is no incompatibility between faith, a belief in God and the spiritual and science / evolution.

If you think there is a contradiction between the two, it just means that you are not the right person to win the debate.

No one ever denies you can’t have faith in whatever you choose just that it is in fact counter to scientific thinking.

Catholics make up 1 billion of the 2.1 billion xians.

Nope far less. The RCC counts everyone born into that branch even those attending elsewhere. As such many are counted twice. Likewise no branch looses more members yearly than the RCC. It’s dying, especially in the USA and Europe.

You are generalizing from a small group of bizarre sects based in south central USA to all christians

This is just stupid. I live in the south and I’ve heard science bashing from catholics as well as Southern Baptists. There is nothing bizarre about these southern sects that isn’t apparent in all sects evolution aside.

Don’t debate with them. Just laugh at them. Or sneer. Either is equally effective. Making them realize that a lot of people think their mystical pink goo-goo voodoo is silly does more to make them question their faith than all the arguments that can be mustered. The faithful are herd animals and pack conformity is very important to them; realizing that they are uncool is a significant shock.

If you can’t beat your opponent in a debate, Laugh at them, sneer at them and generally make fun of them.

Gregg, put up or shut up. Your fumble-fingered typing and aversion to proofreading are amusing, but all this huffing and puffing about what you’re going to accomplish in the glorious future is getting really tiresome.

And when I am finished I will invite any atheist the freedom to post and honest counter argument. You don’t have to be nobility. Some atheist are actually willing to debate. That includes agnostics as well, and I’m easy to get in touch with.

PZ was the one that started this, and stay tuned, I’ll finish it. I’m done on this post, bye. But you have to know PZ Likes me around, he is a tolerant man like Vox Day (well not quite, but almost). Actually quite surprising what he allows, I read here all the time

>If you can’t beat your opponent in a debate, Laugh at
>them, sneer at them and generally make fun of them.

You’re right – it’s literally impossible to beat the faithful in a debate, because they’ll just keep making more stuff up. I mean, it’s easy for the faithful to WIN the debate: all they have to do is present some decent proof of the existence of Omata-Woo-Woo or whatever GooGoo they are claiming. But for some reason they don’t do THAT, either.

So what’s not to laugh about? Here are people with relatively good, functioning brains, and they make a conscious choice to fill them with nonsensical myths. If that’s not hysterical, I don’t know what is!!! I mean, I could understand it if it was some kind of birth defect, like Trisomy-23, but religious people don’t have that excuse. And, since it’s a “lifestyle choice” – yeah, the religious are a fair butt of jokes.

>As a Christian, I am constrained on more than one level
>from taking that approach.

Did you ever consider that you’d be a better debater if you believed in Bart Simpson, instead? Then you wouldn’t be constrained as much and could tell people “Don’t have a cow, man!”

Look, I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice guy and if you stepped in front of my car, I’d swerve so I wouldn’t hit you. But if I believed something as ridiculous as a bunch of foo-foo cribbed together out of Mithraic and Zoroastrian mythology by a bunch of cave-dwelling mountebanks 2,000 years ago, I’d be disinclined to announce that fact so proudly. People might think there’s something wrong with your ability to reason, ya know what I mean?

By the way – my recommended approach: laughing at the faithful – does not suffer from the problem of being castable as a “belief system”

Woo-woo heads have been going around trying to call Dawkins et al “fundamentalist atheists” – and they can get away with it because Dawkins and Harris, etc, are trying to argue using reason. Well, the faithful think that what they’re doing is ‘reason’ too(*) So, of course Dawkins and Harris sound like “fundamentalists” because that’s what they were trained to hear and jump up and down gibbering to.

It’s a lot harder to cast “What are you, f!73ckin STUPID?!” as a belief system. Because it’s personal. It’s not Marcus being “fundamentalist” about my belief system – it’s Marcus personally ridiculing the fact that you’re smart enough to use a keyboard but you’re stupid enough to believe a bunch of completely ridiculous self-contradictory spew and – worse yet – that you’re proud of it. I suppose you believe in The Tooth Fairy, too!! And, hey, do you talk to light-poles like the alcoholics on 42nd St? The light-pole is more likely to answer your prayer and the The Tooth Fairy is more likely to leave you a quarter if you “sacrifice” your front teeth, you laughable morons!

(* Look at this thread! There’s at least one poster making the usual “can’t disprove the existence of Moo-Moo” comment. The fact that people so irrational and poorly uneducated can figure out to post to a blog is a tribute to the usability of the Internet!)

Most god-concepts can and have been disproven. Any such concepts that cannot even potentially be disproven have no content – because observations incompatible with that content would constitute a test capable of disproving it.

Most gods aren’t even coherent. The traditional Christian deity is logically impossible, yet people claim belief in it regardless.

Woo-woo heads have been going around trying to call Dawkins et al “fundamentalist atheists” – and they can get away with it because Dawkins and Harris, etc, are trying to argue using reason. There is a book you can pre-order that won’t use that term, nor will it do anything but rebut their “reason” I suggest you pre-order.

I’m late to the party, having been occupied with other things all day, but I think the term that best characterizes the ideas put forth by IDC folks is ossified. Even the ID arguments, including Behe’s, are little more than variations proposed by medieval theologians a millenium ago. Those ideas ossified in the dark ages and they haven’t found contemporary light yet, to say nothing of the light humankind’s learning has cast on the heretofore unknown in the last three to four centuries.

I speak 2 languages fluently, and can read 3 more well enough to get by and I have no idea what that means. Looking at the rest of the comment from which that quote was taken, I conjecture that it means either “I am typing with mittens on because I live in Antarctica and my hands are cold” or “I am uneducated and functionally illiterate. Spare some change?”

Unfortunately, English lacks another word for the sense that is used for “I believe in evolution.”

How about: I conclude that the balance of probability is overwhelmingly in favour of evolution happening based on an examination of the available evidence.

Actually, there’s a term for going around and calling Creationists IDots and other such things. It’s peer pressure. Peer pressure happens to be a rather effective rhetorical trick to get people to question their beliefs. Churches do it all the time. Granted there are other ways to apply peer pressure, but none quite so easy in a text based medium than just calling them dumb.

Actually, there’s a term for going around and calling Creationists IDots and other such things. It’s peer pressure. Peer pressure happens to be a rather effective rhetorical trick to get people to question their beliefs. Churches do it all the time. Granted there are other ways to apply peer pressure, but none quite so easy in a text based medium than just calling them dumb.

On the other hand, some people are simply being blunt about situation, given as how a large majority of Creationists, including you, attempt to dismiss Evolutionary Biology by claiming that “it’s just a theory,” even though to dismiss a theory as “just a theory” means dismissing the entirety of the Natural Sciences all together. That 99.999% of all Creationists, including you, have no actual desire to actually do or even so much as learn about science in the first place also strongly factors into the use of “IDiot” as a pejorative term.

On the other hand, some people are simply being blunt about situation, given as how a large majority of Creationists, including you, attempt to dismiss Evolutionary Biology by claiming that “it’s just a theory

Well that is what it is called, theory, now even though I am skeptic for good reason that has nothing to do eith God, you might want to pay attention as I DO NOT in anyway dismiss evolutionary biology, nor do I think it is incompatible with a creator.

To be absolutely truthful I don’t know if men evolved or was made “Out of the dirt” Either way is fine with me especially since an MIT Biologist thinks life was created by Co2 and Clay. When in Genesis sit ays that he man was made out of the soil when he “Breathed on them” Argue with him if you want.

The Physicist writes:
> When in Genesis sit ays that he man was made out of
> the soil when he “Breathed on them”

He Man was made from soil? What was She-Ra made from, the power of Greyskull?

To be absolutely truthful you sound like a looney to me. If you “don’t know” you’re sure not acting like it. It sounds to me like you actually *do* think you ‘know’ it’s just that whatever you think is laughably ridiculous and you’re afraid to say what it is because we’ll all giggle and point at you.

Fossil evidence suggests that we humans share a common ancestor with apes, and that humans and apes share a common ancestor with monkeys, lemurs, and other primates such as tarsiers. Gene sequencing tests suggest that rodents, and rodents share a common ancestor with tree shrews, flying lemurs and the primates.
Do you happen to know this professor’s name?
It’s my own opinion, Physicist, but I’m inclined to think that “formed from dust” is a metaphor for our origins.

“raven is absolutely correct. I don’t understand why many of you are on his/her case.”

“Hint: It didn’t start thousands of years ago in a middle eastern cave.
The raving, lunatic modern day creationists only arose just over 100 years ago from a minority protestant faction centered around, of all places, Princeton University.”

I don’t get it. You just place the term “fundamentalist” in context of time and place of origin and simply expand on what most of us know, that the term refers to a specific brand of faith relying on certain tenants of faith that are non-negotiable. How is this proving raven to be correct? She misappropriates the word and uses it as a reference to absolute certainty instead of it’s correct usage. This is both insulting and intellectually dishonest. Atheists do not have tenants of faith (which is a moronic thought) nor do they even have special super duper arguments against theism that are different from other atheists brand of arguments.
Please use the word correctly and not perjoratively lest you get Vincinni’d and Blake’d at the same time.

Sven DiMilo: By referring to posts #87, #96, #107 and #111 I get the impression that you think Caledonian is actually going to weigh in on the substance of our exchange.

I wish that were true, but as you can see, he just did a drive-by, with a one-liner (#131) at my expense and then offered one of his patented semantic criticisms. Perhaps the correct operational definition of the natural world, according to Caledonian, either affirms or denies the possibility of metaphysical naturalism. We’re unlikely to know, though, because he won’t commit to an argument that might be vulnerable to philosophical analysis. It’s a shame, because I would like to have him break his views down. But he habitually declines opportunities to do so.
Consider, for example, my outstanding challenge. The old Scot not only doesn’t reply, he doesn’t even acknowledge the invitation. So don’t hold your breath waiting for a substantive reply. At best, he’ll either remark that the most basic concepts require too much effort to properly define, and if we’re not smart enough to figure it out ourselves, then it’s not worth his time to explain it to us.

‘By the way – my recommended approach: laughing at the faithful – does not suffer from the problem of being castable as a “belief system”…’

That’s true, but turning the other cheek doesn’t automatically make anyone a believer, either, much less a saint. Last time I checked, how a person says something often has a greater bearing on how it’s received that what is actually said. Flies, honey, vinegar, all that. Since my focus is not on disabusing believers of their delusions, but being an effective defender of science and education within the pews, I don’t have the luxury of indulging myself with one-liners at their expense.

Also, while I got a chuckle over ‘cave-dwelling mountebanks’, the original Israelites were nomadic herdsmen, or, if you prefer, ‘tent-dwelling yahoos that reek of sheep’. Cheers….SH

raven is absolutely correct. I don’t understand why many of you are on his/her case.

Raven is absolutely wrong, that is why I’m on his case. First he mistakenly tried to argue that coexistence is evidence of compatibility. Then he tried to pretend that the basic argument isn’t “faith is antithetical to the scientific method,” but “christians hate science,” which no sane person has ever argued. How you can call these missteps and straw men “absolutely correct” is beyond comprehension.

Folks on this blog need to do a better job of learning who the real enemy is, rather than pasting broad swats.

I consider “faith” to be the enemy, so my swat is only as broad as it needs to be.

Catholicism (and many other x-tian sects not based on fundamentalism) may very well represent a doofy set of beliefs, but Catholics–the largest x-tian sect in the US, are hardly the anti-intellectuals, anti-science, or pro-creationist folk they’re being accused of in this comment section.

Look, as an atheist, of course I prefer theists to hold beliefs which do not contradict known facts, since it means they are that much less crazy.

But I also think the fundies are correct when they label this as lukewarm religion. If a religion were true, then it should make successful predictions, confident pronouncements even, on the nature of reality. The Catholic Church now refuses to do this not out of some embrace of or deference to science, but because after centuries of getting their asses kicked on this issue they finally wised up. (*cough* *cough* *Galileo* *cough*) Now their position is just: “whatever you scientists discover, that’s what our god did.” It’s a completely defeatist position, content to claim credit for discoveries it doesn’t have the balls to predict in advance. It is a hollow shell of its past self.

However, they’ve learned that so long as they concern themselves only with unknowables and fictions, they don’t need to concern themselves with reality. The people will still line up nonetheless. But they still promote magic, they still tell people a dead body awoke after three days, and they still sell the gullible a ticket to paradise. So don’t come onto this site with the mistaken impression that some of us don’t “understand” the real problem. We get it, the fundies are worse. But that doesn’t validate the rest of the bullshit.

I experienced first hand why debating IDists is futile just yesterday. Dr Tom Woodward was speaking at the University of Queensland. Instead of acknowledging any of the factual material bought up in questions, he name-dropped, diverted the topic, or questioned whether the audience, not having read any of the “founding texts” of ID, were qualified to question him.

At these talks, a good approach seems to be to point out a natural phenomenon, such as bacterial acquistion of antibiotic resistance, explain how evolution accounts for the effect, then ask what ID has to add.

Scott Hatfield:
>Last time I checked, how a person says something often
>has a greater bearing on how it’s received that what
>is actually said. Flies, honey, vinegar, all that.

By that logic, then you should be going up and down the aisles waving your hands like a spastic evangelical retard going, “I FEEEEEEEEL the DNA! Let me hear you SAY IT! Can you say DNA?! OOOOOOOO!!!!!” etc.

Joking aside – obviously, I disagree with you. If you cast your message in terms that are going to just slide right into their little psyche without creating a disturbance, what you’re really saying is that you’re making it easy for them to ignore you. Been there, done that.

Or, are you saying that there are actually some studies I need to be aware of regarding the relative effectiveness of being verbally direct (“offensive”) versus indirect (“nice”)? That’d be interesting and I’d love to read them if you can post some references.

> Since my focus is not on disabusing believers of
>their delusions, but being an effective defender
>of science and education within the pews, I don’t
>have the luxury of indulging myself with one-liners
>at their expense.

You can’t both be an effective defender of science and education while bending over backwards to avoid disabusing the deluded of their precious daydreams. Since you wrote “pews” I believe I can assume you’re dealing with delusional Xtians who believe some goofy mixture of 3-in-1 dieties (kind of like a holy Leatherman tool!) and virgin births and other laughable nonsense. Defending science in THAT kind of environment? You’re kidding yourself.

I’ve “been there, done that.” I used to attempt to gently reason with them, picking and choosing my battles, arguing cleverly but courteously, etc. What I realized after about a decade of that was that I had entered into a tacit agreement that I’d say my bit and they’d nod and go “uh huh. uh huh. uh huh.” like they actually were listening. Meanwhile, they were mentally offering up prayers to the Amazing Spider Man (or whatever inane B.S. they worshipped) for my salvation and eventual enlightenment. I hate to break it to you, but you’re probably struggling to enlighten a bunch of hoodwinked ignorami who are pitying YOU the whole time. That’s gotta suck, huh?

Scott Hatfield
>Also, while I got a chuckle over ‘cave-dwelling
>mountebanks’, the original Israelites were nomadic
>herdsmen, or, if you prefer, ‘tent-dwelling yahoos
>that reek of sheep’

No, I was accurate. The early Xtians were the cave-dwelling mountebanks who ripped off Mithraism and rolled it into their ridiculous resurrection story about Jebus coming back from the dead and the sacrifice to remove sin and all that codswollop.

The Abrahamic holy men you refer to (the Pre-Jebus con-artists) indeed were tent-dwellers and their concern for sheep certainly reflects itself in the campfire stories they cooked up.

Since what got us going on this thread was plagiarism, I’m surprised that I’m the first to point out that Xtianity has a long and fruitful history of plagiarism. In fact, most of the whole story is plagiarized. All the saints, pretty much, are ripped off from other religions. The Jebus story is largely an amplification of the Mithras story (with the addition of some parlor tricks like healing the “lame”, which are still popular with evangelical con-artists today) There are Sumerian tall tales like Noah and the ark that got worked in there, etc, etc. If someone tried to pawn off a load of ripoff like Xtianity today there would be gigantic lawsuits.

At least L. Ron Hubbard managed to get creative when he made up his religion. Although the structure of Scientology is (*YAWN*) horrifyingly typical religious nonsense, at least he tipped a nod to the zeitgeist and had space aliens and weird rays and boxes with blinky lights and so on.

Isn’t it sad that Xtianity isn’t even as creative or clever as the religion that was frothed up by the guy who penned “Battlefield Earth”? For crying out loud! That’s PATHETIC!

Anyone else here a Friends fan? Let me take you back to an episode in Season 1:

Phoebe says she doesn’t believe in evolution to Ross’s chagrin. The following are some of their exchanges throughout the episode:

Phoebe: I just don’t buy it.

Ross: Evolution is not for you to “buy” it is scientific fact, like…gravity.

Phoebe: Oh don’t get me started on gravity.

Ross: You don’t believe in gravity?

Phoebe: Well, it’s not that I don’t believe in it, it’s just that lately I haven’t felt like I’m being pulled down so much as I am being pushed.
————-
Ross: We have fossils from all over the world showing how things have evolved… North America, Africa, Asia… you can actually see them evolving.

Phoebe: I didn’t know that.

Ross: Well, there you go.

Phoebe: So the real question is: Who put the fossils there, and why?
——
Ross: Without evolution, how do you explain opposable thumbs?

I followed this debate since the initial exchange here.
I thought it would be entertaining, but from the beginning it was not. I was not impressed with the opening, and (for reasons that are obvious now) it did not feel like anything new and original. Reading the posts there and now on this thread, I don’t think I am following it any further.

Fizzy Cyst,
I know this probably makes me scared in your opinion, but I guess I’ll just have to live with that.

We could discover a new category besides ‘matter’ and ‘energy’, but that category would still be part of the natural world.

This is the point religionists don’t grasp – if they postulate a deity that’s real, that exists, it’s automatically part of the natural world and thus within the bounds of the things science can study. It doesn’t matter whether it relies on new phenomena or not – at some point it has to interact with the things already acknowledged to be within science, and those things can only be studied by examining the phenomena that affect them.

Of course, some people like to move their deity out of the realm of reality to avoid conflicts with science, which renders their beliefs necessarily incorrect – especially when they then try to assert that their deity has real effects.

btw, I completely agree with the original premise of this thread. It is completely pointless to debate creationism with/against creationists.

It’s a bit like getting into a discussion with your fulminatly adolescent child, who operate on a premise that rejects everything you are and what you represent. Fortunately, unlike creationists, adolescents generally outgrow this way of thinking.

…good morning…
re Gregg #148: Actually, Gregg is right about this. My brother’s girlfriend knows a guy whose cousin’s wife went to MIT; she took Bio 1 from a prof who referred to himself only as “The Biolgoisth”[sic], and he apparently said that way back in the day life was created by Co2 [sic] and clay. Asked about the source of the Co2, “The BlioLoguk” merely exhaled. True story, or so I’m told. Engineers, huh?
MR#149: She-Ra was made from sugar, spice, everything nice, and snails. Or so I’m told.
#157: “holy Leatherman” was funny.
#158: word.
Cal #139: Huh?
SH,OM #152 re Cal: Indeed. Cal seems to prioritize pith and directness (& sometimes contempt) over actual communication.
#154: I smiled at the phrases “within the pews” and “reek of sheep.” [must…resist…implying……constubtion of…phrases…]
HH#155: you should do something about that Galileo; otherwise well said.
Cal#163: Antimatter occurred to me later, for a sample. By “operationally defined” I meant “stipulated for the purposes of the discussion at hand.” (That may well be an incorrect use of “operational definition” but as a mere biologist the ‘kipedia page on the subject makes no sense at all to me.) But, see, neither that nor the stipulated definition itself were the point of the conversation.

#158: Marcus Ranum, your rhetoric is colorful, implying that the early Christian were both primitive (‘cave-dwellers’) and snake oil salesman (‘mountebanks’).

Curious, then, that such were able to transform the culture of the Roman Empire, don’t you think? One can, I think, reject the inspirational claims of early Christianity and yet find your caricature of its history deficient.

For example, were Peter and Paul cave-dwellers? I don’t think so: Peter, by all accounts, lived in a conventional fishing community along the Sea of Galilee, while Paul was an urban, Hellenized Jew. I just don’t see that the rhetorical flourish ‘cave-dwelling’ can be justified.

(Perhaps you are associating the early Christians with ascetic communities such as the Essenes? If so, you should know that the Essenes’ teachings differed in significant ways from those of Paul or the early church Fathers.)

Now, ‘mountebank’ is another matter. Paul was certainly a salesman who, by his own admission, adjusted his pitch to his audience, as when he addresses the ‘unknown God’ of the Gentiles. But neither that, nor the syncretic tendencies of primitive peoples, nor the ascription of text to other authors (Moses almost certainly did not write ‘The Pentateuch)—-none of that amounts to plagiarism in the modern sense of ‘intellectual theft.’

One might as well characterize the scribes who collected pre-Macedonian legends as plagiarists, since they ascribed them all to Homer.

Right now, at this moment in our evolution, for the average person a comfort point seems to lie somewhere between blind-eyed mysticism and scorched-earth atheism.

Unfortunately, no. The *average* person is squarely in the blind-eyed mysticism camp. There’s a few of us outliers in ordinary atheism. I don’t think I’ve ever met a scorched-earth atheist (whatever that means – someone who wants to burn all churches to the ground, plus everything in a 10 mile radius of one? Ban mythology and execute all writers of fiction?).

Seems to me the possibility exists that symbolism serves a deep-rooted, organic purpose, that we need myths, irrespective of their objective truthfulness.

Well, sure. But that doesn’t and shouldn’t stop us from occasionally pointing out that their objective truthfulness objectively is “not true”, to anyone who is likely to become confused on that point.

I enjoy myths and symbolism and fiction as much as the next guy, if not more. But I know that there’s a difference between fact and fiction and it’s important not to confuse them with each other. Basing real life actions or decisions on fiction is a path to disaster.

Anyone who routinely inadvertently confuses fact with fiction needs psychological help. Anyone who *deliberately* confuses fact with fiction, or deliberately causes others to do so, is committing a harmful and evil act of deception.

Scott Hatfield writes:
>Curious, then, that such were able to transform the
>culture of the Roman Empire, don’t you think?

Why’s it curious? Lysenko was able to transform the scientific culture of The Soviet Union and he was also a B.S. artist. The transformative power of delusion is well-documented. Are you really saying that the con-artists who wrote the bible were somehow special because they were able to fool a lot of Romans? I don’t think you get extra credit for the scope of your mass delusion, unless it’s retard-points or something.

Remember, the Romans were accustomed to having new dieties cranked out every couple years. And the fact that the Xtians absorbed Mithraism (which was a popular cult already!) gave them an “in”

As for the “Physicist”, the poor fellow seems to exhibit many of the symptoms of schizophrenia. I personally know (or knew)several, and it certainly isn’t a pleasant affliction. In fact, its downright nightmarish. Let us all keep that in mind in our future reactions to him.

That said, it is no wonder that ‘plagiarism’ was detected with such ease, considering that his typical barely comprehensible gibberish suddenly manifested a fair orderliness. The question then becomes: can a schizophrenic person really be accused of plagiarism? I’m not entirely sure, since many schizophrenics are at least partially competent. I’ll go farther and say EVERYBODY exhibits some disorderliness in their thinking, from time to time and to varying degrees. Its in the nature of having humongous brains…

PZ: its a tough call, but I couldn’t fault you for removing the Physicist henceforth. In the weighing one can’t help but wonder whether The Right Thing To Do is in letting him take hits, or be done with him and spare both him and other readers who have to put up with it.

scienceteacherinexile, you stopped short of the best line out of that episode: “Yeah, you scientists say you’re ‘sure’ about evolution. That’s what you said about the atom being the smallest thing there is until somebody finally smashed one and a whole bunch of stuff fell out!”

“Lysenko was able to transform the scientific culture of The Soviet Union and he was also a B.S. artist.”

Sure. But Trofim Desinovitch and the state had the power, right? He was able to liquidate any members of the minority group, scientists, who challenged any dogma that threatened his power base. So that’s hardly analogous to the situation with the early Christians: they were the minority group, not the majority, much less the ones with the power to liquidate their perceived enemies. And, in fact, as you should know , the Empire tried to liquidate them on more than one occasion . So I think your analogy fails.

“Remember, the Romans were accustomed to having new dieties cranked out every couple years. And the fact that the Xtians absorbed Mithraism (which was a popular cult already!) gave them an “in””

Again, if we treated this as analogy, it would fail. The new ‘dieties’ were the personality cult of the god-Emperors: in other words, the personification of the state. The modern analogy would be the personality cults of Stalin or Mao. As I’m sure you know, those personality cults have failed, just as those of the Roman emperors failed.

Not at all. Christianity might have been, as some might put it, a historically successful meme, but that has nothing to do with the truth of its claims. We can suspend judgement on the latter (agree to disagree, if you like) while acknowledging the former.

My point is this: Christianity was persecuted by the Romans, to a degree that other belief systems were not; the Empire, not the early Christians, held the reins of power and more than once embarked upon campaigns to exterminate their cult; despite this (or perhaps because of this?) Christianity grew, and eventually ‘took over.’ This requires an explanation that, if not conceding the truth claims of Christianity, will identify the strengths of the cult or the circumstances that worked in their favor.

I submit to you that any credible account of the former that begins with the premise ‘the early Christians were cave-dwelling mountebanks’ has a lot of explaining to do. From that point of view, I find your blithe appeal to ‘the transformative power of delusion’ insufficient and your analogies misplaced. Let us grant for the moment the proposition that Christianity is false, utter snake oil. Fine. But what is it about this snake oil that allowed it, rather than some other belief system, to triumph over that which persecuted it? I’m genuinely interested in your response!

On a personal note, I’m enjoying this exchange. Your prose is lively and provocative, and I appreciate the fact that you have brought arguments to bear, rather than mere ridicule. I don’t take these things personally, so feel free to respond freely, and I hope you will receive this correspondence in the same spirit.

So that’s hardly analogous to the situation with the early Christians: they were the minority group, not the majority, much less the ones with the power to liquidate their perceived enemies.

That’s true of the earliest Christians, but not all early ones – once they gained control of the power structure, they outlawed everything else and began a centuries-long campaign of extermination against the knowledge and culture of the pagan world.

Let us grant for the moment the proposition that Christianity is false, utter snake oil.

Sounds good to me. One of its claims is that people can pray for amazing things and they will happen. That of course is pure baloney, hence we will just kindly sweep that part under the rug and we’ll think about the other more ummmm “profound” verses that we like better, thank you very much.

Christianity was persecuted by the Romans, to a degree that other belief systems were not; the Empire, not the early Christians, held the reins of power and more than once embarked upon campaigns to exterminate their cult; despite this (or perhaps because of this?) Christianity grew, and eventually ‘took over.’ This requires an explanation that, if not conceding the truth claims of Christianity, will identify the strengths of the cult or the circumstances that worked in their favor.

Scott- much of this is simply wishful thinking. The religion was not persecuted more than others. Once Constantine converted they had the power of the empire. Simple after that. You could follow your flawed logic and ask what the jews missed or why has Islam grown sofst or what are you missing with the Mormons that lends their rapid growth.

Likewise sometimes a religions growth has much to do with simple timing. It is clear their is little original in the religion or any religion. The Roman empire was experiencing upheaval, a large underclass existed. Many,many factors exist. This post isn’t going to shed light on them.

The new ‘dieties’ were the personality cult of the god-Emperors: in other words, the personification of the state. The modern analogy would be the personality cults of Stalin or Mao.

This is simply false. There where many ancient ‘gods’. They where not all based on personality. Heck, many are listed in the bible itself.In fact by % relatively few where ‘personality’ cults by your definition. Likewise one could argue that Christianity is also based on a personality, albeit a perceived gentle one.

“Scott- much of this is simply wishful thinking. The religion was not persecuted more than others. Once Constantine converted they had the power of the empire.”

I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong on the first point and misled by the second point. I intend to offer a spirited defense of that position, but I hope anyone reading this long post will hang with me and read everything, including the caveats at the end. I refer all to this interesting article on religion in the Roman Empire as a springboard for discussion.

Now, Uber, I agree—Constantine put the Christians effectively in charge when he ‘converted’ ca. 320 A.D., but some of us seem to be forgetting that serious persecution of Christians in Rome began in 64 A.D., under Nero. That’s a period of 256 years, a chunk of time greater than the history of these United States! It seems more than a little cavalier to dismiss the two and a half centuries in which Christians were a minority, often persecuted.

After about 110 A.D. the cult was outlawed and those charged with its belief faced severe treatment if they did not recant when brought before the authorities. Local acts of cruelty were commonplace, and one particularly notorious example led to the complete extermination of the Christian community at Lyon (A.D. 177). Empire-wide persecution on a grand scale began in earnest in the beginning of the 3rd century, and reached its peak in the reign of Diocletian.

Now, what of the other religions of this period outside of the Greco-Roman pantheon? Did they experience comparable persecution, in multiple waves of purges, many empire-wide, for more than two centuries? In a word, no.* Rather, these other cults tended to be quickly assimilated, and the prevailing Roman attitude was one of syncretism, with the ‘new deity’ often interpreted as a local aspect of some member of the established pantheon, as in the many dalliances of Jupiter with mortal maidens. The Emperor Caligula cheerfully joined in with the cult of Isis, and , beginning ca. 180 AD with Commodus, many Emperors (among them Diocletian) participated in the assimilated version of Mithraism that came to be known as Sol Invictus. Officially sanctioned shrines known as mithraea were found throughout the Empire.

*Honesty compels me to admit that there was at least comparable persecution of Jews within the Roman Empire in the late 1st century and throughout the 2nd.

However, this was less of a case of religious persecution as it was an attempt to punish a rebellious minority group. The Romans were provoked by Jewish insurrections in 70 AD in Jerusalem and in 115 AD and 132 AD throughout the empire. Also, prior to the 115 AD revolt, there seemed to be little appreciation by the pagan Romans as to any distinction between the Jewish people and the cult of Christianity.

And, indeed from the Roman point of view, both the Jews and the Christians with their emphasis on the one god constituted a greater threat to their pantheon that the ever-multiplying catalog of local demigods and mystery cults, since the latter could be syncretized while the former resisted.

Indeed, a great irony of all this is that the Roman mind regarded the Christians as ‘atheists’, for their insistence that the Roman pantheon should be rejected, as in Justin Martyr’s First Apology. Since this was by custom identifiable with the Empire’s tradition, small wonder that Christians (and, to a lesser extent, Jews) were regarded as enemies of the state in pagan Rome.

I also hasten to add that any persecution experienced by Christians under Rome is at least an order of magnitude less than the 1,600-odd years of Christian-inspired anti-semitism at the expense of the Jewish people.

Also, my purpose in providing a somewhat exhaustive defense of the claim that Christians were especially persecuted by the Romans is not to provide ammunition for any claims about the contemporary persecution of Christians, which are often greatly exaggerated and proceed from a false sense of privilege, one that should not be afforded them by a secular society.

Finally, even if some of you remain unconvinced of the remarkable aspect of Christianity’s growth under persecution in its first few centuries of existence, I would hope that we could agree that there is more going on here than was suggested by Marcus Ranum’s brief (#132). I invite anyone who stayed to the bitter end of this post to continue this discussion with me on my blog right here.

Scott- much of this is simply wishful thinking. The religion was not persecuted more than others. Once Constantine converted they had the power of the empire. Simple after that.

True, but you need to distinguish the early period from the later one. And Christianity was different from other new religion in the empire because it denied other Gods. Most popular Gods could be added to a personal pantheon. So Christianity was a little different (and may have been why it attracted persecution). Were other religions persecuted by the Empire before the 300s? Obviously, Christian exclusivity, coupled with imperial power made persecution of non-Christians almost inevitable. But you need to separate Christianity as it existed before the 300s with Christianity after it was coopted by the Empire.

even if some of you remain unconvinced of the remarkable aspect of Christianity’s growth under persecution in its first few centuries of existence,

I don’t think anyone denies the religion grew quickly under persecution. One thing that is important to remember is that all cults start small and experience exponential growth before leveling off. Christianity certainly has been successful but shows a growth ring not so different than other religions that survived. It now has become virtually stasis in reality despite the overinflated numbers of the bean counters. In all likelyhood it is regressing. Thesame claims are made today as then. Obviously something slows the spread and eventually stops it despite huge resources and mechanisms helping it along.

If one is to use the spread of a religion as a indicator of it’s quality or wonder why people followed it in the place of persecution one can look to any number of contemporary religions. A 300 year period means most of the followers where simply indoctrinated past the originators. This leads one to think this has more to do with the social upheaval of the times and the exclusive nature of the religion as us/them rather than ‘we’ that oppressed individuals may have found appealing.

Likewise this is somewhat reinforced by the fact when Christians got power they began persecuting others. It appears to be one social faction against another.

raven: Humans don’t have any muscles in their feet?? At least the other two are hidden; it always astonishes me that people can make such claims. Did you follow that up with a direct demonstration of its ludicrousness?

Christian: Spinoza was in danger if he came out as an atheist. Why do you call the universe god? Doesn’t that lead to fantastic equivocations and confusion?

I gotcha. I chose the Sagan example only because it was familiar. Besides, there’s this, which suggests that those frightened by ‘naturalism’ tend to read too much in such statements, as in this from Owen Gingerich:

“My title echoes the opening line of the late Carl Sagan’s widely watched Cosmos television series. At the beginning Carl intoned, “The Cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be.” That is surely the logician speaking. To some critics, it was an atheist manifesto. “Really?” his producer asked rather incredulously when I reported this. “We just put it in because it seemed poetic!”